Brian O'Toole
Contributing since August, 2010
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173articles
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About Brian O'Toole
Having learnt his writing techniques reading e-Books of Sherlock Holmes, Brian now spends his time /kicking, lurking, SSHing and encoding.
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Since the advent of Android in 2009, the family of devices running Google's mobile OS has grown from one handset to now hundreds and possibly thousands of unique models. In recent months, Android has seen an explosion of devices coming from lesser-known Asian manufacturers, with one of the main selling points being price. The manufacturers realized that with Android they had a readily and freely accessible operating system, a large market of potential customers, and all they had to do was put together a cheap device to capitalize on Android's continued growth. Unfortunately, these devices often cut corners where things mattered the most - poor displays, resistive touchscreens, bad build quality and a litany of other crimes against the gods of consumer electronics.
These last few days the Android blogosphere has been awash with excited spluttering, dubious rumours and hopeful conflation. Kicking things off was City A.M., a "London-based free daily newspaper that specialises in financial news". According to an article on their website, Google had struck a deal with the popular phone retailer Carphone Warehouse. CPW were to sell Google's next phone, the Nexus Two by any other name. Their position as a reseller of phones and contracts on most if not all networks in the UK and wider Europe makes them a logical choice, right? Nexus One sales online didn't exactly break records, so it makes sense to try the next carrier-agnostic option.
This morning Sony Ericsson posted a teaser video on YouTube explaining to X10 users the differences they will find in the update from Android 1.6 to 2.1. As painful as it is to watch a video of someone demonstrating five homescreens, slide-to-unlock and live wallpapers like they're brand new features, the video underscores the growing expectation that an update will be released for the X10 within the next few days.
Building on the strength of the growing e-Reader market, bookstore giant Barnes & Noble has just formally unveiled its latest device: the NOOKcolor. Rumoured for some time now, but never offering much in the way of solid details, the covers are now off this full-color touchscreen device.
It could only last so long. Boy Genius Report received a tip today that T-Mobile USA is making preparations to follow other carriers' foot steps and is going to start charging for tethering on November 3rd. The $14.99 monthly plan is a surcharge on top of an obligatory $19.99 Unlimited Web plan, so don't go thinking you can replace one with the other.
While the UK has had the Desire HD since early last week, the EVO look-a-like model and its sibling are only starting to trickle into Irish stores. Currently Vodafone appears to be the only carrier offering one of the new Desires, with the Desire HD available on pre-pay for €479 or €229 on an 18 month €35 contract. However, many Irish Android users appear to be holding out for their network of choice, Meteor, to announce the Desire HD and to a lesser extent the Desire Z.
Here's some great news for owners of the budget flavour-of-the-month, the ZTE Blade. Saddled with Éclair at birth, the dudes over at MoDaCo's ZTE Blade section have given their phones a new lease of life with a Froyo port from the domestic Chinese model to their beloved Orange San Francisco.
As is traditional following the leak of a new ROM dump, developers have already set to work porting the novel Android flavour to other devices. As he did with the Desire HD ROM, XDA-developers' eVil D: has stepped forward to provide a working port of yesterday's HTC Glacier/myTouch 4G ROM to the Nexus One. Cautioning that he "may or may not support this", eVil D: goes on to describe the semi-functional state that the port is currently in:
After an agonizing wait, we now know Verizon's plans for the Tab, right from the source itself. The tablet will be available three weeks from now, on the 11th of November, and the full retail price is to be $599.99 - although VZW has not disclosed any on-contract price. An optional $20/mo 1 GB tariff is alluded to but it is unclear whether or not this will bring with it a discount to the Tab's sticker price. If the MiFi iPad plan is any indication, this $20 monthly option may be a rolling 30 day contract without any device subsidy, but that is wait-and-see right now.
You may envy those who have their hands on a Desire HD already, but early-adoption is rose-like with its obligatory thorns attached. Many owners on XDA-Developers are reporting issues with their phone's screen when making and receiving calls. Outbound calls appear to deactivate the screen permanently and render the phone entirely unresponsive, save for a battery-pull and fresh boot. Receipt of calls conversely keeps the screen on and active, even when pressed against your ear.
Samsung may have its Android tablet out and about in Europe, but it looks like the other large Android manufacturers - Motorola and HTC - are just getting themselves into gear. Last month, DigiTimes reported some dubious rumours that Pegatron (a division of ASUS) had won the contract to manufacture HTC's tablet device with the following description:
You may have read or heard some of the choice words directed by Steve Jobs towards Android yesterday, in Apple's Q3 Earnings call. Today, in a completely unrelated development, Mr. Andrew Rubin joined Twitter and made it quite clear what he thought of the matter. Clear, that is, if you understand bash:
While Samsung's much anticipated 7-incher is still yet to arrive on a carrier in the USA, availability is spreading throughout Europe. Today, Vodafone Germany posted its prices for the Galaxy Tab, and they're looking pretty steep. For the proposed €729.90 ($1015), you could get not one but two nicely-specced dualcore netbooks (from Samsung!), which makes me question whether this is simply Samsung exploiting a naïve and nascent market; a price bubble which is set to burst shortly.
This news has been some time coming, but it finally looks like the time is nigh: Sprint WiMax will soon be available in three of America's hottest of hot-spots. While Sprint has had 4G-capable devices out for several months now, the country's two main technology centres have been starved of WiMax coverage. Sprint may fear the same backlash AT&T received when their network got hammered by the iPhone, so they must be hoping for a more positive reception.
On the one hand, we have the Desire HD. People may call it the EVO 4G for Europe, but it really isn't. Here we have the newly unveiled HTC Gratia. People are calling it the HTC Aria for Europe, and that's exactly what it is. The hardware appears to be identical save for some new colours, which, considering people seem quite fond of the Aria in the USA, is probably a good thing.
Somewhere behind the Great Firewall of China, a group of devout HTC hackers are working hard at doing what they do best. Over at the now-famous 911sniper blog, another ROM belonging to an as of yet unannounced HTC device has just been posted ahead of time.
One of the most popular alternate launchers, ADW Launcher, perhaps known best for being bundled with CyanogenMod, has just received a welcome update. Version 1.20 now grants you the ability to fluidly resize your widgets, much like the launcher provided by MOTOBLUR. This allows you to treat your desktop much more like a customizable canvas than a rigid set of squares.
One lucky Dutch guy (xda member Clock1932) has swept aside any considerations of failed Google "Type Approval" testing and has gotten his paws on what many are calling "the EVO for Europe." Not so fast: while it may lack a kickstand, a 4G radio, and a front facing camera, its new Qualcomm Snapdragon QSD8255 CPU appears to be quite a step up when it comes to benchmarks. Preliminary tests show a result of about 1900, compared to about 1200 on an EVO 4G running Froyo.
With the G2 already getting a non-persistent "soft-root" solution, it was only a matter of time before someone combined it into a nice, user-friendly package. Stepping up to the plate (or rather, the crease) is Paul O'Brien, the founder of UK smartphone website MoDaCo, well known for a myriad of clever hacks.